In recent years, flex fuel vehicles running on a fuel mixture (E0-E100) of ethanol and gasoline are being increased in the South American countries, such as Brazil, being rich in ethanol resources. Here, E0 refers to 0% ethanol, i.e., pure gasoline, E50 refers to 50% ethanol and 50% gasoline, and E100 refers to 100% ethanol, i.e., pure ethanol.
However, ethanol has a high flash point and a low vapor pressure compared to gasoline, and thus, as the percentage of ethanol in the fuel mixture is increased, this may cause a startability problem under low outside temperature conditions, especially, in wintertime. In other words, when the outside temperature is dropped below 12°, ethanol is difficult to evaporate, which makes it difficult to start an engine.
In order to solve this problem, an auxiliary tank system or a heated injector system has been proposed. The auxiliary tank system is a system that is provided with an auxiliary tank for the storage and supply of a special fuel for cold start. The heated injector system is a system that improves the startability of the engine by heating a fuel to be injected into the engine using a heater inside an injector.
When the auxiliary tank system is applied to a vehicle, it requires the mounting of additional parts/components including a fuel tank, a fuel cap, a fuel pump, a bracket, and a fuel line, and thus, the cost of production is increased and the number of parts/components subject to quality assurance and A/S is increased. In addition, it is necessary to reserve an additional space within a narrow engine compartment, and there is a cumbersome problem including the injection of the special fuel.
For this reason, the heated injector system has recently been applied to most of the vehicles. This system directly heats a highly flammable fuel, which may lead to a vehicle fire, and thus, it requires very high stability.
The conventional heated injector system heats the fuel under control of an engine control unit (ECU) in consideration of stability. In other words, the conventional heated injector system does not heat the fuel if it does not receive a control signal from the ECU through a controller area network (CAN).
Therefore, when a failure occurs in CAN communications, the conventional heated injector system does not work, and thus, it would be difficult to improve the startability of the engine.
The information disclosed in this Background of the Invention section is only for enhancement of understanding of the general background of the invention and should not be taken as an acknowledgement or any form of suggestion that this information forms the prior art already known to a person skilled in the art.